Biocontrol

Welcome to the Home Page for the Midwest Institute for Biological Control!

This home page for the Midwest Institute for Biological Control is meant to serve as a primer on biological control of insect pests, with the primer designed originally to provide background to the specialty courses taught at the Institute (see information below on "the Midwest Institute" and links to "Course Schedule). The information contained is not meant to provide the reader with all that is (or should be) known about biological control. Instead, we hope that the information contained here will stimulate your interest and that the information find use beyond that original design as an adjunct to the speciality courses. We have structured the Institute's web site based on the course we have taught, with basic information supplemented by numerous photographs and other illustrations. For more detail about any of the topics we refer the interested user to the reference page, as well as the many texts and other media available on biological control or natural enemies.

The information contained on the web site is a collection from many entomologists in the Midwestern U.S. (see link to "Who We Are" below), and we are grateful to those that provided photos or shared their insights or data. In addition to the intellectual contributions of many of our colleagues, the Institute courses and web project have received funding support from numerous institutions (see link to "Financial Support" below).

The ultimate compliment to those that helped develop the material is to see it used by many others. With that in mind, we urge the interested reader touse this information, to develop further their own awareness of and the role of biological control as part of integrated pest management. We ask the reader and user to be considerate of those that developed the infomation -- use it, but don't abuse it. If you wish to print or copy the information here, please feel free to do so, but please keep it in its original form and grant attribution in your use of this information.

Each page in a specialty area contains a contact person and the date that the page was last updated. If you find an error or want further information about a specialty topic, please contact the person whose address is listed for each page. Finally, we ask you to examine the kinds of specialty courses we have offered (and will offer next year) and suggest you consider enrolling in one of the future courses.

Please feel free to e-mail any of the contacts listed for information about future courses. Specialty courses are intense (3-6 days in length) and designed for graduate students or those with some background in the topic; they are not designed for the weak of heart! But if you are committed to gaining further insight into the biological control offered, we welcome your participation.

What the Midwest Institute for Biological Control Is

Nearly all of the Midwestern universities has an individual faculty member that specializes in one aspect of biological control, meaning that any course taught will reflect that specialist's interests, and biases -- and will omit aspects less known by the instructor. The Midwest Institute for Biological Control was envisioned as a means to bring specialists from within and outside the region together to teach gradate students intense offerings on specialized topics in biological control, often from broader perspectives.

The Midwest Institute held its first course in 1991, teaching "Theories and Models of Biological Control" at Purdue University to 14 students. Since then, annual courses have rotated among campuses at the University of Illinois, Iowa State University, and Michigan State University. In addition, we have offered two courses overseas: in 1997, we offered a course at the Pan American School of Agriculture in Honduras, and in 1999, offered a course at the USDA-Agriculture Research Service's European Biological Control Laboratory in France. To date, over 225 students, primarily from the Midwest, have enrolled in these non-credit courses taught by approximately 25 instructors or lecturers. Although the courses have been designed primarily for graduate students, participants also have included university faculty and staff, USDA and Forest Service scientists, agricultural growers, biology teachers and industry personnel.